Friday, March 06, 2009

The New Cannibalism

As surely as night follows day, the Obama administration is now poised to lift the ban on the federal funding of research on human embryos, meaning that we are moving along the path down which the white-coated Nazi scientists were the first to tread. If what made the the wanton use of human life for medical research so horrendous in the 1930s and 1940s was the blatant barbarity of the experiments, what makes the embryonic version of it so horrendous is the sheer numbers of tiny innocent human lives that will be used as so much raw material. The old and growing ever older will now begin to live off the young. Such a civilization neither deserves to survive, nor will it.

Greetings all, I was unable to find a webcast of Gil's presentation yesterday. Is there a recording or archive or archive where I might listen to it?

On this matter we are in full agreement. No one would consider killing children and feeding them to the elderly as a moral cure for anything. Yet this is allowed. Frankly this ban was the only thing W ever did with which I agreed.

I fear there may come a day that I will have to refuse treatment in order to not benefit from such experimentation. The trick will be to convince people to refuse treatment for their children. That will be the harder refusal.

Folks might let Grammy go, she’s lived a full life, but what about the Soccer Mom who’s daughter is dying and a treatment is suggested? I imagine mother-love would take over and all moral theosiphising will go by the boards. We have to push for research that does not use embyos. Otherwise parents will have an impossible choice. Once children’s lives are saved or restored by this treatment, there will be no stopping it.

We need to see what we can do to provide viable alternatives to using treatments derived from such research. We have to find and promote researchers who refuse to work with embryonic stem cells. That is the best way forward on this. To be honest, I voted for Obama knowing full well he would do this. So too did many other’s I’m sure. We now need to do what we can to ameliorate the damage. Does anyone know of groups out there who are working on alternatives?

Greetings, I just had an idea hit me, please tell me what you think. A few weeks ago someone told me that the early Christians in Rome, who were opposed to the practice of exposing children, would wait until such children were left by Roman families, collect those babies and raise them as their own.

What if we Christians did something similar? What if we offered to procure the embryos which are left over after artificial insemination? We could then offer them to infertile couples. This would seem to allow us to be part of a solution, rather than simply a group of nay-sayers. We might not be able to stop what is already underway, but we could remove the argument, "Well those embryos will just be thrown away. May as well make good use of them."

It's not a bad idea, but maybe those who supported the man who is making such a rescue campaign necessary should acknowledge that had those who did support him followed the advice of the "nay-sayers" the campaign would be far, far less necessary.

It's too bad that the nay-sayers in Nazi Germany couldn't have been more positive in their response to barbarism. Too bad as well that the nay-saying abolitionists didn't come up with a more positive program, perhaps buying slaves and setting them free -- which some did, but which some thought only gave legitimacy to the institution of slavery.

But since when do we vote in elected officials and,with no sense of the irony and without apologizing for the mistake we've made, offer the services of others in an effort to repair the damage the elected officials have wrought? And, for good measure, taking a swipe at those who saw perfectly clearly what the election would bring: the "nay-sayers."

Gil Bailie didn't really say this, Suzanne Ross did. But she had trouble posting it, so she asked me to do so for her, which I am happy to do.

"Hi Gil. I'd like to share what I understand to be what actually happened:

1) the ban that was in place only applied to gov't funding of stem cell research. This allowed private research to continue and we have no idea what has been going on in privately funded research. 2) lifting the ban on government funded research provides for the results of any research to be public, not private, and therefore the research itself will be subject to scrutiny and public debate. 3) Stem cells can be obtained from non-embryonic sources such as placenta, cord blood and amniotic fluid. Whether or not embryos are actually used has not be decided but is up to congress to decide. So I don't think that the situation calls for such dire rhetoric. In fact, comparing Obama and his supporters to Nazi scientists is so divisive as to close down the type of conversation I think the administration is trying to encourage. If you want to have an influence on public policy, then civil discourse is required so as not to degenerate into endless rounds of name-calling. I hope for the outcome you hope for, Gil, but to work constructively for that outcome is the challenge before us."

I don't have time for this, and, frankly, these comments are unworthy of response, but for what it's worth the last two comments by Kevin and Sue represent the now all-too-familiar pathological Western self-hatred.

If the West is the cursed source of all that is wrong with the world, someone had better tell the ocean of immigrants from the alternatives to it who are risking so much to avail themselves of the political and economic benefits for which the West is rightly seen as the champion and source.

Columbus and other cannibals? Far worse no doubt than the rivers of blood that flowed down the sacrificial altars and soaked the battlefields of the indigenous populations.

Gil, I have now unsubscribed from this and will simply move on. With Violence Unveiled you gave me excellent understanding of why the Crucifixion occurred. Why it had to be. I thank you for that. We are obviously unable to communicate and I'm saddened by that. Take care Gil. Kevin